Death
Maybrick's health deteriorated suddenly on 27 April 1889, and he died fifteen days later. The circumstances of his death were deemed suspicious by his brothers and an inquest, held in a local hotel, came to the verdict that arsenical poisoning was the most likely cause, administered by persons unknown.
Suspicion immediately fell on Florence and she was arrested some days later. She stood trial at Liverpool Crown Court and, after a lengthy hearing, the fairness of which was the subject of some debate in later years, she was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. The way in which the judge conducted her trial was questioned and this was probably the reason her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, some of which she served in a prison in Woking, Surrey, and then at the "House of Detention" at Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.
A re-examination of her case resulted in her release in 1904. She supported herself through various occupations until her death on 23 October 1941. From her initial incarceration until her death, she never saw her children again.
Read more about this topic: James Maybrick
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him meerly seise me, and onely declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwrack, I would do it in a sea, where mine impotencie might have some excuse; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)
“Faithfulness to the past can be a kind of death above ground. Writing of the past is a resurrection; the past then lives in your words and you are free.”
—Jessamyn West (1902–1984)
“Taking a child to the toy store is the nearest thing to a death wish parents can have.”
—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)